Life often teaches us lessons through irony, with twists that are both heartbreaking and humorous. One man left his wife after she gave birth to a dark-skinned baby, assuming she had cheated, only for him to later have another dark-skinned child himself, proving she had been innocent all along. In high school, two girls dated and swapped the same two football players, only to discover the boys were secretly in a relationship with each other. A teenager was once asked to bail his estranged father out of jail—because the man had been arrested for not paying child support. Another woman went to the doctor for an allergic reaction and was given Benadryl, only to find out she was allergic to it.

Sometimes irony comes in love: a girl who always dated the boys her friend liked ended up forgotten when two of those boys later started dating each other. For another family, the cruelest twist came when a husband died the very day his first paycheck without child support deductions arrived. Life also likes to poke fun—like the spelling bee winner whose name was misspelled in the yearbook, or two classmates who thought their textbook was misprinted, only to later learn they were the only ones in their class who were colorblind.

Other stories show how bad timing can ruin good fortune: a student who won a $1,000 prize missed the ceremony, a worker who developed stress-induced eczema couldn’t attend the stress-relief massage arranged for them, and a surgeon performing a heart operation ended up having a heart attack himself and became a patient alongside the man he was saving. Even little ironies sting: someone made a spare key for their car but locked both keys inside the same day, and a workplace gave out “safety” spatulas as awards—one of which cut the recipient badly on its very first use.

These stories, whether tragic or funny, remind us that life writes its own unpredictable plots, often with a sharp sense of humor.